I have a love/hate relationship with paper towels. They are convenient when you have a little mess to just wipe up and throw away, but when you are on a tight budget purchasing paper towels every week is something we do without. My husband and I have established a habit to not use paper towels, and now we use them on rare occasion. We don’t even have them in our kitchen, if we want a paper towel we have to go looking for them.

A few months ago I set out to find a paper towel solution that worked for us. Here is the solution that we came up with:

Cheap washcloths from Walmart, folded nicely in the drawer with the other dishcloths. When I have a little thing to wipe up, or a baby with a messy face I can just grab one from out of here and I’m good to go!

When we are done using the cloth, we needed a place to put it until we wash it. Obviously we need enough to make it worth doing a load of laundry. Under our kitchen sink we have a little green garbage can that we got from a dollar store. When we are finished using the cloth, we drop it in the garbage can to await the washer. If the rag is soaking wet, we usually drape it over the sink divider to let it dry and then drop it in the can under the sink. I usually wash them when it gets full, and I throw in whatever other towels in the house are dirty.

UPDATE (unrelated to this topic): Since writing this post, we have gotten rid of the dishwasher soap that you see in this picture. We now make it ourselves and it does an even better job than these products!